Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Magnum primers in standard loads?

How would you know a 210 from a 215?

I don't believe there's a hard and fast capacity break over point. The particular primer and powder combination is surely in play.

I've been loading long enough to have several generations of primers in my stash, particularly CCI. There was a time when the CCI large rifle magnum primer didn't have a "hotter" compound in it than their regular primer. It just had more priming compound. The recommendation in the Speer data was to use the magnum primer for ball powders including cartridges with much smaller capacity than 80 grains.

I'm not a "primer scientist" but I can think of several things about how a primer gets things started. How much heat is available from the priming charge? At what temperature is this heat delivered? How sharp is the delivery?

This generally has been my observation. I have not done a lot of experimentation, but the mag primers have not been a game changer. I have quite a few mag primers, so if/when I run out of standards, I have no issue switching to use the mags.

I was just going to mention this. In my Speer manual number 12 all ball powders are listed with magnum primers. Even with cartridges 50 grain and smaller maximum charge weights. At least the cartridges I load for.

Pretty easy to distinguish. You don’t load them?

I got 5,000 Gederal 210s and 5000 Federsl 215s and I can't tell the difference looking at them

He said he pulled a primer out of primed 338 brass and determined it to be a 210

Yeah, we probably have discussed this!

But I have encountered many exceptions to that, including using magnum primers in the .220 Swift with Ramshot Big game and 55-grain Ballistic Tips. With CCI 200s 100-yard groups averaged over 1-1/2 inches, but with Federal 215s the same load averaged .66 inch.

Thanks, Gentlemen for all your input! Threads like this are the reason I hang around the 'fire!

I have a Ruger American in.243 that is not giving me the groups I would like with various 95-100 grain bullets over Ramshot Hunter. I'm thinking I will try magnum primers when I get some time and see if that helps any. I've heard that sometimes magnum primers can shrink groups when using double based powders, so I may as well give it a try. I'll back off a couple of grains at the start to be safe.

John, I've pretty much kept to that rule of thumb, except where proven loads work with magnum primers. The only eye opener that didn't work was with the 257 Weatherby. 71.3gr (factory equivalent according to the old Weatherby Guide) with 100gr pills for a true to book velocity. Tried 210s and groups opened up significantly. One caliber that did surprise me was the 375 H&H. My go to load had always been 76gr og H414 215M primers, WW cases and 300gr A Frames. Worked great on everything from a kudu at 350 yards to wildebeest at 50 and good velocity (2550 fps). When I switched to TSXs, JJ Hack gave me his load using 74gr of RL-15 for the 270gr and 72 for the 300. Very accurate and good velocity. TRied 215s and both loads were markedly less accurate.

I'm using Ramshot Hunter with Fed 215 primer and 168 TTSX in my 30-06 and shot 1/2 MOA at 2950 FPS

I'm glad I saw this thread. I've been somewhat ignorant about the risks of willy-nilly going from standard primers to magnum primers. Sometimes what you don't know can bite you in the ass. Having said that, in the past I've discovered that my 7x57 groups way better with H4i4 when I use magnum primes, same goes for the 30.06 when using H414.

Not really a true rifle cartridge, but I have one rifle in 45 Colt that is finicky on primers like that. It shoots anywhere between middling and not worth a wooden nickel with standards, but groups tighten up to most shots touching @50yds with Fed155 and CCI350 magnums across several different powder/bullet combos.

Though magnum primers often help spherical (ball) powders, which are all double-based, they don't always help extruded double-based powders. The "problem" with spherical powders is the deterrent coatings, which control burn rate. The coatings are why traditional spherical powders tended to burn "dirty"--because by by definition they're harder to burn.

Though many extruded powders, both single- and double-based, also feature such coatings, they're not nearly as difficult to burn as those used in spherical powders.

Might also mention that some newer spherical powders don't burn dirty at the pressures they're designed to work at--especially the Belgian-made Ramshots. While many powder manufacturers are pretty closed-mouthed about their products, I am guessing the coatings on those Ramshot rifle powders are designed to burn once pressure reaches around 60,000 psi--because they do burn pretty dirty at less than around 60,000.

I've been using 43 grains of Hunter with 100 grain bullets (mostly Hornady) and 43.5 grains with 95 grain BT's. I would think I must be close to 60,000 psi as those are right at the Ramshot listed maximums. I'm getting around 2950 fps from the 22 inch barrel.

In the time it took to type that, you could have simply answered.

My 215s have purple color on the inside, the 210s are barn red.

Absolutely !!!!!!! And therein lies the biggest problem with just arbitrarily changing primers w/o starting at a guesstimated safe place.

In a "standard" rifle of less than 60 gr. of a relatively slow burning powder, I will not mess with changing to a magnum primer unless I have accuracy problems or think I might get a little more reliable ignition with a dense, ball powder in very cold conditions............but those occasions are rare.

There are no hard & fast rules, just general rules of thumb with every instance being a potential exception.

And over the years I've come to prefer the range of Federal Match primers for every type of use that I can get them for, either pistol or rifle. They've just worked most consistently, but once again there's always an exception but I don't recall one where a different primer was significantly better as MD cited above (but I'm sure he's done much more specific testing than me).............might have been one, just don't specifically remember one.

If I can't get Fed Match, then I'll settle for standards.

Just my view of the world.

MM

We used std primers in magnums when that's all that was made.

JOC didn't have magnum primers for his famous 4831 loads.

They went bang and killed just fine.

Another solution in search of a problem.

The “problem “ as you may recall is a dwindling supply of standard primers coupled with an excess supply of magnum primers